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Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#581

Post by cirgue »

bruce511 wrote: post #450
throwaway485 wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a brief window at the beginning where it would have mattered to know the origin of the virus. Intervention at a wet market or in a wuhan lab could have happened. However, this theory was circulated and promoted to inspire hatred and distrust of many authority figures. Authorities who put significant resources forward to save lives. Even today we're still seeing thousands die from what may very well be a con…

To me fair the folk dying today are tangential to the origin story. I'm not sure the origin story mattered a whole lot along the way, other than being a useful political distraction. I don't think it informed personal or medical behaviour. Of course discussions around vaccines, masks, social distancing etc did have a huge impact on personal behaviours, so those are far more impactful both than and in hindsight. The d…

The origin 100% does matter. It demonstrates that some kinds of virus research pose an existential threat to humanity if not handled properly. That seems relevant, especially when simultaneously Covid demonstrated that such research is also really important to do. Like the origin actually does pose some serious, non-trivial ethical questions about disease research that the public absolutely has a right and obligation to participate in.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#582

Post by jakear »

fzeroracer wrote: post #312
jakear wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really happened, as stated in the very source you gave, was that if you had a heart attack at home an ambulance would come to “deal with you” (because of course they would), but if they attempted to resuscitate you for 20 minutes and you still didn’t recover they wouldn’t then take you to the hospital. You should know the survival rate of a heart attack is far far lower than most expect, especially after 20 minu…

There are many [1] many [2] many [3] many [4] many [5] many [6] many [7] examples of people who died as a result of our hospital systems being overloaded and being forced to ration care. This is what was meant by the geometric growth of hospital patients and how many hospital systems were close to outright breaking. You are ultimately factually wrong and extremely unaware of how much stress this put on our hospital s…

7 whole examples? Wow.

And how many millions of children have ongoing severely stunted development in both academics and social skills? More than 7 million. By some estimates 77 million, in fact.

The real question is how many more will die as a result of our horribly irresponsible treatment of our most valuable national resource: the children.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#583

Post by gizmo »

AdamN wrote: post #524
jeswin wrote: post #431

I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned, tagged as racists, and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. About how almost the entire scientific community discarded the idea as impossible. How during the early pandemic years, no mainstream news media dared talk about the possibility. Te…

The problem was that almost nobody was saying the source 'might' have been a lab leak - they were saying that the source was 'definitely' a lab leak and then usually adding that Fauci sponsored gain of function research into viruses and then into conspiracy theory land. Most of us were open to the idea of a lab leak but the disinformation was so hard around the topic that sensible people had to push back and the lose…

No no no. The problem was that talking about a lab leak in any way was considered deplorable. So much so that the only people who still dared to speak about the lab leak in public were outcasts, lunatics, and people who didn't have a reputation that could be destroyed.

In times of crisis a large fraction of the population will latch on to authoritarianism. This is universally true, and there are many historical and contemporary examples. The world is messy and complicated and people desperately want simple answers. People will cheer on the collapse of hard-won civil rights and the advent of military rule if they believe it's necessary for the greater good. Thankfully it didn't come to this during covid. But not because there was an invisible line in the sand that nobody dared to cross. People were not held in check by their principles, covid just didn't "necessitate" an even harsher response.

This is why many people are so upset about the censorship surrounding the lab leak theory. They got a rude awakening. One, that fundamental rights like free speech can curbed very effectively, and two, that it's the citizenry itself that demands their rights be taken away. It's scary to be suddenly robbed of naïve notions about rights and process and governance.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#584

Post by ttflee »

jeswin wrote: post #431

I'd like for someone to throughly research and write about how it became taboo to discuss the virus leak theory. How researchers who discussed it were shunned, tagged as racists, and in some cases had their posts banned from Social Media. About how almost the entire scientific community discarded the idea as impossible. How during the early pandemic years, no mainstream news media dared talk about the possibility. Te…

It was kinda pro-trumpish to say that before Joe nailed the presidency.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#585

Post by misja111 »

revelio wrote: post #573
misja111 wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem was that the epidemic started in the middle of the US election campaign. At some point the Trump team started to support the lab leak theory. And then it became political; Biden supporters started framing them as conspiracy theorists, anybody who dared to support the leak theory was labeled as a Trump supporter etc. In China some people must have been amazed how the US was arranging such a thorough cover-…

Lab leak theory was suppressed worldwide, it wasn't just in the USA.

I know, I live in Europe. But where I live in Europe we were simply following the pattern from the US; once the lab leak theory was linked to Trump, people supporting it were seen as Trump supporters. Trump isn't very popular in Europe as you might know, so this was enough to make most people be quiet.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#586

Post by mannykannot »

mjburgess wrote: post #496
Ancapistani wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories around China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control. I don’t recall a single instance of this. A year ago, people were saying on this site and elsewhere was that the issue was conflating “lab leak” with “intentionally engineered”. A year bef…

[flagged]

In this post and the one it is replying to, we see an example of how dichotomization gets in the way of discussing complex issues, and anecdotal dichotomization doubly so.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#587

Post by XorNot »

shri_krishna wrote: post #508
cygx wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However none of this applies to rhetoric against Russia [...] How come no US citizen is attacking Russians [...] Quoting https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/03/anti-russia... As Putin’s invasion of Ukraine intensifies, some Russian-themed businesses and Russian Americans in the United States are suddenly getting a frosty reception — and in a few cases, experiencing outright hostility. A Russian restaurant i…

Okay and have these attacks stopped coverage against Russia in the US media? If the argument for censoring lab leak discussion is "attack on Asians" then why isn't coverage on Russia censored for "attack on Russians"?

There's a whole lot of Russian expats who have been quite vocal in supporting the war against Ukraine by Russia.

When Russians complain they're being victimised, it might behold you to consider that "Russian" is pretty much not an identifiable group amongst the wide range of eastern Europeans who have immigrated - including Ukrainians.

So when Russians complain they're being mistreated, is worth asking what they were doing at the time. Because it tends to be vocally supporting the Russian invasion[1] or the whole idea of it is being straight up invented and pushed by Kremlin propaganda agents[2].

[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/germany-pro-russia-rallies-discrimin...

[2] https://time.com/6257372/russia-ukraine-war-disinformation/

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#588

Post by cygx »

revelio wrote: post #571
lock-the-spock wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was never a consensus for or against lockdowns. Cant speak for the US and it's utterly broken media landscape but in Europe experts were asking for this from day one. It is also a known tool of any epidemic/pandemic management, it just has rarely been necessary at such scale given the intensity and wide distribution of COVID.

This is revisionism. The only place in Europe that didn't lock down was Sweden and they were viciously attacked in the media for it, additionally Anders Tegnall was also attacked by other epidemiologists. I followed it all very closely at the time. Tegnall and his mentor stood alone. With the exception of the Great Barrington crew and maybe Ioannidis, all the other so-called experts were loudly and vocally demanding…

But severity and timeline of lockdown measures varied from country to country, ie there was some diversity of opinion. Also note that even Sweden eventually implemented policies such as restricting opening hours of bars and restaurants, limiting the size of some gatherings, etc. for a time.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#589

Post by pfisherman »

015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #546
px43 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a high level, it's pretty simple. There was a very well coordinated and intentional conflation of the term "lab leak" with the conspiracy theories around China and the WHO intentionally developing and deploying bio-weapons as a means of global population control. These conspiracy theories lead to a marked rise in violent attacks on anyone of Asian descent in the US, and generally fed into the wet dream fantasies o…

I think you overstate how much the lab leak and the bioweapon stories were being conflated. I recall that most people were able to distinguish between them, and that the most prominent figures raising red flags about a potential leak weren't talking about bioweapons. In any case, the most alarming aspect of the lab leak hypothesis is that gain-of-function research is STILL being done, and that the same thing could ha…

> the most alarming aspect of the lab leak hypothesis is that gain-of-function research is STILL being done, and that the same thing could happen AGAIN.

This right here is an example of why we can’t have reasoned discussion around the topic.

You can explain one of the many reasons why gain of function research is necessary: anticipating next year’s version of the flu, designing drugs and vaccines such that resistance mutations reduce evolutionary fitness.

You can explain how it is done: lots of computational simulations, and some benchtop with results feeding back into computational methods.

You can explain some of the safeguards in place: BSL 3/4 facilities, regulatory / institutional oversight, security services, etc.

And then someone will stand up on a chair and yell “SUPER VIRUS!”

Anyway from my perspective, the “lab leak” theory tends to be people pushing an unsubstantiated theory to either (1) blame China for an “act of god/nature” or (2) argue for a moratorium on infectious disease / vaccine / therapeutic research.

Please note that no one here is calling you a racist. But I think calling parts of your comment uninformed or misinformed is fair game for discussion.

Re: Inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid

#590

Post by shri_krishna »

XorNot wrote: post #587
shri_krishna wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay and have these attacks stopped coverage against Russia in the US media? If the argument for censoring lab leak discussion is "attack on Asians" then why isn't coverage on Russia censored for "attack on Russians"?

There's a whole lot of Russian expats who have been quite vocal in supporting the war against Ukraine by Russia. When Russians complain they're being victimised, it might behold you to consider that "Russian" is pretty much not an identifiable group amongst the wide range of eastern Europeans who have immigrated - including Ukrainians. So when Russians complain they're being mistreated, is worth asking what they were…

The point I was making is not whether Russians feel mistreated or Asians feel mistreated etc. That is a separate debate. I am only making a limited point on "Lab leak theory was censored because it lead to rise in Asian hate crime". This makes absolutely no sense to me. Investigating possible lab leak theory that lead to one of the worst pandemics in recent times should be done irrespective of whether there is hate crime or not. Both have no correlation. And investigation can be done behind the scenes too. The problem is that there was absolutely no attempt at doing proper investigation. Whether it leads to conclusion or not is secondary.
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